Halfway to 90!

Happy Birthday to Me! To celebrate I've even blogged a bit this week.

I'll go sign in at Book Journey's round-up of what people have read, are reading, and will read. I'm eligible again for Teach Mentor Texts since I read one YA book.

This week I read:

• Marathon, Boaz Yakin (Cybils graphic novel)
• The Righteous Mind, Jonathan Haidt. Recommended by my little brother. 
• Nexus, Ramez Naam. Book club -- a member knows the author!
• My Stroke of Insight, Jill Bolte Taylor. Interesting
• Frost Burned, Patricia Briggs. Birthday present for me!
• Cry Wolf, Patricia Briggs. Car audio.

What am I currently reading? Technically I have 23 books open, but really I'm only trying to read about three. Well, five if you count the NOOK books.  Most books are just for browsing, and then there's all the books left over from the summer that I'll get to REAL SOON NOW.

• Naked in Death, J.D. Robb. (NOOK). Last month's Vaginal Fantasy pick.
• Some of the Best From Tor.Com 2011. (NOOK) This is from my favorite review site.
• Bloody Jack, L.A. Meyer. Just like Alanna, Jack finds menarche scary. 
• Blackwood, Gwenda Bond. Another Secret Santa present.
• Steel's Edge, Ilona Andrews. The dangerous undercover part.
• The King of Attolia, Megan Whelan Turner. Oh Costis, if you only knew...
• A Temple of Texts, William H. Gass. This is definitely a book I enjoy thinking about more than actually reading.
• Serpent's Shadow, Rick Riordan. Gee Sadie, is it possible that the reason Walter's impending death is sad isn't that it means you might not have a date to the dance?
• Fuzzy Nation, John Scalzi (audio). My car book. The kids approve, especially when they heard Wil Wheaton's voice.
• The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener, Martin Gardner. Dipper. I am also not a political extremist.
• The Pickwick Papers, Charles Dickens. Dipper. Time for a party, and then a chase!
• Senrid, Sherwood Smith. Dipper. Hasn't Senrid figured them out yet?
• War With the Newts, Karel Capek. Dipper. I see action on the horizon!
• Abraham Lincoln: Prairie Years, Carl Sandburg. I like this Lincoln, who just turned 18.
• A Parent's Guide to Developmental Delays,  Laurie Lecomer. How to spot various cognitive difficulties in the early grades.

What will I read next week? I now have a sense of this, since I'm regulating my page intake to about 100 pages a day (not counting book club books:

• Wild Girl, Patricia Reilly Giff. For my school book club.
• Why We Broke Up, Daniel Handler. In my bag, but not started yet.
• Soup's Hoop, Robert Peck. (Monday) From my shelves.
• Furious, Mike Shepherd. (Tuesday) SF series.
• The Tunnel of Hugsy Goode,  Eleanor Estes. (Friday) From my shelves.
• Summer of the Gypsy Moths, Sara Pennypacker. (Sunday) RML book.

2013 Challenges:

1. TBR Double Dog Dare: Still at eleven. And I cheated and read my birthday present, but it was my birthday so I give myself a pass. I'm very lenient this year! I'm definitely not good at this, but on the bright side, I have just about conquered the library mountain.
2. Cybils: 6/74. I'll start this in earnest in April.
3. Where Am I Reading?: 14. I got Montana and Massachusetts. Seven countries now that I have Thailand and Greece.
4. Crazy Quilt Colors: 2/9. No luck yet. Can I count "bloody" for red?
5. Science Book Challenge: Need to re-sign up, especially since Righteous Minds would count.
6. Reading My Library: Next one to start next week.
7. Best of the Best 2012: 38/25. Ordered the next audio, which I just noticed is later in the Bloody Jack series. Heh.
8. Summer Reading Goal: About to get back to work on Hugsy Goode.

Great Restraint

The weather was so beautiful on Saturday that we went to play outside instead of going to the library. I met up with my brother and we played miniature golf and celebrated P's new stature by racing around in go-carts. Then I raced up to the city to get the boys to a party, and came down via the mall to get myself an early birthday present of a new iphone. Now I'm hip!


So it wasn't until Sunday that I snuck into the library, with a lonely N whose family had abandoned him for the state gymnastics meet. He was a grumpy about being forced to accompany me to retrieve the other boys, from a party he wasn't even invited to! And then the library failed him by being out of Transformer videos. It was very sad, so I only grabbed one thing from the hold shelf; the audio version of Captain Vorpatril's Alliance, which should be ready for listening by the time X reads up that far in the series (he's on Cetaganda now, with Memory afterward, I think). This doesn't count as a book because I own the ebook copy. That's my rational.

This left me with 45 items out on my card, which, thanks to my birthday this week, is now my age! So I can buy a book, although I shouldn't read it yet because of the Double Dog Challenge which I failed last week anyway.

I'll go share my Library Loot at the event co-hosted by Claire from the Captive Reader and Marg from The Adventures of an Intrepid Reader, where all the library addicts compare their treasures. And I think I'll sign up at Tynga's Stacking the Shelves, which asks for all the books acquired. I'm hoping that I control my book-buying better than my library browsing, but at least the NOOK acquisitions won't topple my house!

Hard To Explain: Carnelians

Catherine Asaro's Ruby Dynasty books are a bit of a guilty pleasure for me. I think her world building is inconsistent and her characters strike me as constantly astonished to find that they live in their society (in a "what, my mother the queen is a constitutional monarch?" kind of way), but reading the dialog as her characters stumble around in confusion pleases me and leaves me waiting for more.


Not to mention that as I read the series I know that she's written a book that takes place a decade or so in the future of these books that indicates that everything the good guys are trying to do will fail utterly, but the books themselves are so optimistic that I can't see that happening. La la la.

Anyway, I got Carnelians from the library and gobbled it up. It has many of the aspects I most delight in, and I enjoyed it from start to finish. One main character is apparently the accidental offspring of some people from an earlier book, despite that fact that several of the intervening books have stressed how impossible it is for these characters to reproduce without extensive help or by dangerous in-breeding. Hey, stuff happens. And she has many secret abilities that she has effortlessly hidden for her entire childhood, despite the extreme pain other characters with the same abilities suffer through attempting to conceal them. But whatever, here she is, having adventures, and being astonished that people feared and ostracized by EVERYONE in her world react pleasantly when she doesn't know to fear and avoid them. Because why would she? They are just people.

And then there are old favorites like Kelric and Roca with their wonderful, amazingly silly conversations, and the hand-waving math/internet/psychic stuff, and throw in more Delric and his rock star career, and I've got a perfect summer pool-side read. And that's before the sex-slaves show up.

Some More Best Books

Although the challenge is long over, I'm still working my way through the 2012 Best of the Best ALA lists. Whenever I finish I'll probably start the current years -- it looks like it won't be 2013, though.

Super Human, Michael Carroll.  This Best of the Best choice took me forever to get to, much to my son's chagrin, since he recommended it highly. In fact, we saw the next two sequels at the bookstore before I even finished this one. My favorite part was the world building, which was done with pleasing subtlety. The details of the super-hero rich world, with both smart inventors and heros with special powers, is revealed through the matter-of-fact actions of the main characters, both super and non. But the very end, where the basic foundations and morality of the society are questioned, throws everything into doubt in a very interesting way. I'm very glad I have the next book waiting for me. (I wrote this last December or so, and I have to admit I haven't yet started the next one, although I know where it is. I am looking forward to it, though.)

Curse of the Wendigo, Rick Yancey. Narrated by Steven Boyer. This horror story was far too grim for us, with the eleven year old dropping out early and even the fourteen year old saying I could listen ahead without him. The dead baby floating in a sea of excrement in the last disc was just the last and worst of a series of really gross scenes that kept throwing me out of the story. It got so that we just hung out waiting for the next icky thing. Nice vocabulary, though. Both boys think I'm insane for insisting on finishing it.

 

Scorpio Races (audio) Maggie Stiefvater.  Narrated by Steve West and Fiona Hardingham. X and I have both read and enjoyed this novel before, and P had fun listening along, although he didn't blink when I listened ahead without him. The dual narration worked very well, which at first I worried about. I could hear where the narrators made some different choices than I had when I read it, but not in an annoying way. Both X and I noticed the love story much more in audio format, although I'm not sure whether that's a rereading thing or an listening thing. Also, I'm a sucker for British accents saying "Sawrn" or "Puck Connolly." This one is highly recommended as a written or audio book.

Reading My Library: N-O-P

I suddenly noticed that my Reading My Library books were coming due, so I hurriedly read them all, which mostly broke me out of a reading slump. I'm amused at how I lean towards fantasy, but then the call of the Where Am I Reading Challenges lures me back to realistic fiction, which is more likely to take place in an actual place.

Faith, Hope, and Ivy June, Phyllis Reynolds Naylor.  Although Naylor's writing is fresh and realistic, creating two believable girls with their circle of friends, I felt that the book as a whole was unbalanced. The story of two Kentucky school girls from the richest and poorest counties given a chance to visit and learn from each other was enough; throwing in a mining disaster wasn't necessary.

Sparrow Road, Sheila O'Connor. A pleasant story of a girl confronting issues of identity and family in an interesting environment. I'd like a little more detail to the setting, and as an adult I found her whining and her mother's secrecy very annoying, but I don't think either would have struck me as a child reader.

Bread and Roses, Too, Katherine Paterson. A fun historical fiction set around the textile strike in Massachusetts in the early twentieth century. The two main characters were the bookish member of an Italian immigrant family and the illiterate son of a drunk American; they bounce off each other several times before ending up together in Vermont for the duration.

Lucky Breaks, Susan Patron. Unfortunately I read three books very quickly, and they all involved a bit of children behaving badly. The plot followed the familiar pattern of a child being a pill (betraying a friend, being reckless and rude), learning from her mistakes with the helpful assistance of a cadre of compassionate friends and family, and resolving to Do Better. On the other hand, I really wanted to hand this book to my niece so she could read it -- I think she'd really like it.

Marching On

Well, I guess February happened. I don't seem to remember most of it. There are scattered blurs -- my nephew had a wonderful birthday weekend that we all celebrated down at the indoor water park, and one of my best friends for the past decade or two came for a visit, a rare and treasured event. And there were a few other birthdays, but mostly I ran in circles and didn't get much done. I didn't even read much, although I spent a lot of time picking up old comfort books and reading through my favorite bits.

I've started listening to old favorite stories in my car. I'm ambivalent about listening to new things, but I usually like hearing books I've previously read. I think it's because I can't control the speed, so if it's fresh territory then I want to fine tune the pace -- speeding up if the plot is gripping, slowing down to savor a moment or to dread the next stage.

I'll go sign in at Book Journey's round-up of what people have read, are reading, and will read. I'm eligible again for Teach Mentor Texts since I really only read kidlit books.

This week I read:

• Lucky Breaks, Susan Patron. RML choice. Good but not to my taste.
• Bread and Roses Too, Katherine Paterson. RML. Interesting history of Wobbly strike.
• Sparrow Road, Sheila O'Connor. RML. Child meets father.
• Scorpio Races, Maggie Streifvater (audio). Best of the Best.
• A Civil Campaign, Lois McMaster Bujold (audio). Comfort.

Earlier in February I also read:

• Savor the Moment (Bride Quartet 3), Nora Roberts
• Vision in White (Bride Quartet 1), Nora Roberts
• Happy Ever After (Bride Quartet 4), Nora Roberts
• Celebrity In Death, J.D. Robb (Nora Roberts)
• Gone, Michael Grant. YA.
• The Ninth Circle, R.M. Meluch
• The Enemy, Charlie Higson. YA.
• Dearly Departed, Lia Habel. YA
• Bed of Roses (Bride Quartet 2), Nora Roberts (for book club)
• Every Day, David Levithan. YA
• Twenty and Ten, Clair Huchet Bishop. kidlit
• The Lost Stars: Tarnished Knight, Jack Campbell
• The Spanish Marriage, Madeleine Robins
• Sammy Keyes and the Power of Justice Jack, Wendelin van Draanen. kidlit
• The Shadow of the Wind,  Carlos Ruiz Zafon
• Under the Mesquite Guadalupe Garcia Mccall. YA
• Fleas, Flies and Friars: Children's Poetry from the Middle Ages, Nicholas Orne

What am I currently reading? Technically I have 23 books open, but really I'm only trying to read about three. Well, five if you count the NOOK books.  Most books are just for browsing, and then there's all the books left over from the summer that I'll get to REAL SOON NOW.

• The Righteous Mind, Jonathan Haidt. (NOOK) Back from the library, and I'm enjoying it a lot, especially as it intersects with other books involving morality (which is a lot of them).
• Some of the Best From Tor.Com 2011. (NOOK) This is from my favorite review site.
• Nexus, Ramez Naam. (NOOK) For book club.
• Bloody Jack, L.A. Meyer. She's just become a he and set off to sea. Secret Santa present.
• Steel's Edge, Ilona Andrews. A Christmas present from my dad. Thanks!
• The King of Attolia, Megan Whelan Turner. A delicious reread.
• A Temple of Texts, William H. Gass. I like reading essays by people passionate about reading, but it slows things down a bit when either I haven't read or I've actively disliked what he's raving about.
• Serpent's Shadow, Rick Riordan. It's sad how much Sadie annoys me. It also slows me down.
• Cry Wolf, Patricia Briggs (audio). My car book.
• The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener, Martin Gardner. Dipper. I am also not a political extremist.
• The Pickwick Papers, Charles Dickens. Dipper. Back to the city. Except I suddenly can't find it.
• Senrid, Sherwood Smith. Dipper. I'm a bit dubious about the escape plan.
• War With the Newts, Karel Capek. Dipper. I see action on the horizon!
• Abraham Lincoln: Prairie Years, Carl Sandburg. I like this Lincoln, who just turned 18.
• A Parent's Guide to Developmental Delays,  Laurie Lecomer. Good description of different developmental areas.
• Kushiel's Dart, Jacqueline Carey. Paused.

What will I read next week? I now have a sense of this, since I'm regulating my page intake to about 100 pages a day (not counting book club books:

• Marathon, Boaz Yakin & Joe Infurnari. Cybils, in my book bag already.
• My Stroke of Insight, Jill Bolte Taylor. Due next Saturday, so it jumps ahead.
• Blackwood, Glenda Bond. (Tuesday) Another Secret Santa prezzie.
• Why We Broke Up, Daniel Handler. (Friday) Best of the Best.
• Frost Burn, Patricia Briggs. Probably as soon as it hits my NOOK.

2013 Challenges:

1. TBR Double Dog Dare: Eleven books from my shelves. And my library books comfortably fit in their crate now.
2. Cybils: 5/74. I just put another one (Marathon) in the bag.
3. Where Am I Reading?: Twelve down, so I'm on target.
4. Crazy Quilt Colors: 2/9. I got White and Blue already!
5. Science Book Challenge: Need to re-sign up.
6. Reading My Library: Three more, and the next batch is out.
7. Best of the Best 2012: 38/25. About to read Why We Broke Up, and picking out the next audio.
8. Summer Reading Goal: The next one is working its way up the stack.

Stacking the Shelves at the Library

I like the rhythm of my Saturday library days, especially on the weekends my boys spend with their dad. Then I sleep in a bit, head off to say hello to MY dad around lunch time, and then dive into the library for some quality time with the shelves.

Of course, with this TBR Double Dog Dare going on I can't make many commitments to the new friends I see, but just flirting is fun too. And today it was time to refill my RML bag, so I spent a leisurely afternoon poking through the next six shelves to see what there was to see. I can tell that I've been missing bringing home everything I see, because I was most drawn to books that I know are on my TBR list.

Oh, I had snuck in a few days earlier to pick up an audio version of Cry Wolf, which is totally not cheating because I own the paper copy but I don't like to read while driving. I'm very safety conscious. And frugal -- I didn't want to hire someone to read my copy aloud.

I got:

• Summer of the Gypsy Moths, Sara Pennypacker. I love her Clementine books, and I trust I'll like her older book as well.
• The Young Man and the Sea, Rodman Philbrick. He's another author I trust.
• Olivia Kidney and the Secret Beneath the City, Ellen Potter. I've never read her earlier books.
• A Dog's Way Home, Bobbie Pyron. The only book I've never heard of before; I'm hoping it works for my read-America challenge.
• Cold Cereal, Adam Rex. I'm expecting strangeness and poignancy.
• May B, Caroline Starr Rose. I've heard a lot about this book, but I forgot it was in verse. Dang.
• Shadows in Flight, Orson Scott Card. I bet my kids want this one, and if they take until April to finish then I can read it too!

This left me with 49 items out on my card, a large step over my age. So I didn't get any new picture books or audio CDs, which are what are propping up my numbers. I've got the books part mostly under control

I bought several ebooks, but I'm going to avoid reading them until later. They were too good bargains to let slide:

• Nexus, Ramez Naam is for book club, so I'll read it this week. The library had it, but too quickly, and then everyone else wanted it to. Thanks for going on sale at Barnes & Noble!
• The Raven Boys, Maggie Stiefvater. She is on my buy-if-possible list.
• The Emperor's Edge, Lindsay Burokers. With a recommendation from a trusted friend, and a tiny price tag, how could I resist?
• Frost Burn, Patricia Briggs. Who am I kidding? Unless my life is absolutely stress free over the next week, and this will not happen, I'm going to dive into this brain candy as soon as it appears on my NOOK this Tuesday. I need some happy endorphins, and Briggs gives them to me.

I'll go share my Library Loot at the event co-hosted by Claire from the Captive Reader and Marg from The Adventures of an Intrepid Reader, where all the library addicts compare their treasures. And I think I'll sign up at Tynga's Stacking the Shelves, which asks for all the books acquired. I'm hoping that I control my book-buying better than my library browsing, but at least the NOOK acquisitions won't topple my house!

Crazy Quilt Colors Challenge

Since I enjoy challenges that encourage me to pick up books I otherwise might not encounter at all, I'm signing up for My Reader's Block's Color Coded Challenge. She lines up nine colors, and I try to read a book with some shade of each color sometime this year.

If I ever start reviewing books around here again, I'll put them on the review page. Clearly that is a long shot. I'm much too busy staring at the walls of books I intend to read any minute now to either do any reading or write about it.

Anyway, the colors are:

1. Blue: Succubus Blues, Richelle Mead
2. Red: Redskin & Cowboy, G.A. Henty; Ruby Holler, Sharon Creech
3. Yellow: Crucible of Gold, Naomi Novik
4. Green: Blood on the Verde River, Dusty Richards
5. Brown: Heaven and Earth, Nora Roberts
6. Black: Blackwood, Gwenda Bond
7. White: Vision in White, Nora Roberts
8. Other (mostly mixed colors): Violet Mackerel's Brilliant Plot, Anna Branford
9. Implied (patterns): Crab Monsters, Teenage Cavemen, and Candy Stripe Nurses, Chris Nashawaty

Hey, I got White and Blue already! Go me!

Two Space Operas In Different Universes

The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier: Invincible, by Jack Campbell. I'm enjoying Campbell's long string of military science fiction, following a war hero forced back into active service after a century in frozen sleep. The writing is fairly stilted, but I like the sincerity and think that it matches the earnest, boy-scoutish demeanor of the main character. I'm also enjoying the blend of gender-neutral society -- this space navy doesn't blink at having women in combat, in command, and in the marines -- and a traditional gender confusion between Black Jack and his wife or any other important female character. In true Heinlein fashion, the women usually know more but are careful of the men about it.

I got a tickle out of the cover, which shows a heroic captain with a big gun and shiny space armor, especially in light of the conversation between Jack and his wife, where she tells him that if he dies she'll carry on by writing a best-selling memoir about her life with him, complete with a cover showing him doing something improbably heroic, "maybe in battle armor. With a gun." Hey, maybe it will turn out that she was writing this whole series!

Killbox, Ann Aguire. I'm also enjoying Aguire's very different space opera story, with the characters leading the rebellion that cracked open society. At this point they are trying to patch things together again, an effort made complicated by the enormous alien invasion heading their way.

The contrasts are delicious -- Jax and her friends are more mercenaries than professional soldiers, and even when they are fighting for the government they don't really understand the military as a society. Jax and her lover decide to break up while they serve together, since they can't work together professionally. But they do it with angst and drama, each worrying that the other is secretly relieved to be alone again. The character's emotions often feel much more honest and realistic -- closer to how people really feel rather than how they should feel in the best of all possible worlds.

I'm enjoying both series, although they tickle very different parts of my brain.